


There is No Other Refuge

by Alsike



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 11:10:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14104071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alsike/pseuds/Alsike
Summary: Make an island of yourself,make yourself your refuge;there is no other refuge.Make truth your island,make truth your refuge;there is no other refuge.Digha Nikaya, 16Someone--I don't know who because their ask has disappeared--asked "I want to know how Emma & Emily would fuck up a literal Soulmates AU." So did I.





	There is No Other Refuge

When Emily was born, she had a ghostmark. It was one of the more common ones, a print on her palm, pale, but she was pale enough that no one really noticed it. Ghostmarks had gone through different interpretations over time, and in different cultures they meant different things. More equatorial cultures put greater stock in them. They were a good thing. They meant bonding and long life. The more north or south you got, the more people whispered about ghost-touched. The marks meant trouble.

In the modern era, the most popular notion was that it meant true love, whatever that was, and programmers developed handprint modeling kits, trying to do scientific matches using big data.

It didn't work. Ghostmarks were not like fingerprints. People claimed they marked the touch of your soulbond, that first touch. They were a smear of motion, a moment of interaction. They were chaotic. People were chaotic. They changed from one day to the next. How could anything so impermanent have a destiny?

Emily had a ghostmark, but she learned at a young age, that chaos was something to be avoided at all cost. Reason, that was the answer. Her ghostmark didn't matter.

#

A ghostmark on the face was always a trigger for teasing. Emma sat with her brother behind the pool and whined about it.

"Everyone thinks I'm going to goad my soulbond into slapping me. There are perfectly good reasons to touch someone's face that isn't slapping."

Christian, who didn't have a ghostmark, and was starting to think he knew why, hid his smile. If his little sister didn't make her soulbond slap her a some point, they'd be far more patient than anyone he'd ever met.

Emma was looking away, jaw taut, fingers flexing. A thicker cloud than usual hung over her head. "It doesn't mean he's going to hit me."

Oh.

"Of course not," Christian said. "It doesn't work like that. People who do that kind of thing, they don't get soulbonds, they don't deserve them."

But Emma, who had been jaded since she was eleven, turned her head in a long slow pan and looked at him. He knew what she was thinking. It would be nice, if that was the way the world worked, but it wasn't.

It wasn't.

#

Emily Prentiss was quiet and polite and nerdy and clearly a pushover. Adults liked her. Emma hated her.

Parties gave Emma a headache. She was having lots of headaches lately, stabbing, miserable headaches, with light and noise sensitivity. Her dad was dismissive. People didn't go to the doctor just for headaches. Her mom gave her some of her valium, which only helped in that she felt less terrified about how much her head hurt. Her dad thought she was making excuses to get out of going to parties, but the more people there were, the more it hurt.

She wasn't like Emily. She never could think of the right thing to say to someone at a party. Any time someone spoke to her, no matter how politely, she could feel the dissonance in their heads:  _ oh no, Winston's bratty kid. Why is she dressed like that? She looks like a whore. She's not pretty, but she wouldn't be ugly if she smiled. How does someone like her deserve a ghostmark? Ugh, face marks are such bad luck. _ With all of that it was hard to come up with a response.

Even though Emma hated her, she gravitated to Emily when they were at the same party. It was reasonably frequently. The Frosts and the Prentisses lived in intersecting orbits. Winston and Elizabeth were great friends. Emily was nearly Christian's age, but she and Emma had been told to become friends. That, obviously, meant they'd never be. But it was still easier to be around her at big parties. Annoying, but the headaches didn't get quite as bad.

Other things got bad though. It was clear Emily let her mom dress her; she always looked uncomfortable in the clothes and hairstyles she wore. She preferred long sleeves or other features that made her dresses look childlike, even though she was fifteen and had boobs enough to hold up grownup dresses. She was awkward but she was pretty, and she never smiled at Emma, but when she smiled at other people, all Emma felt was angry.

She smiled at this one guy a little too much. He wasn't disgustingly old, only like thirty-five, Emma guessed. He was good looking, if you liked I-banker chic. He'd taken Emily over to the windowseat, which was half guarded by the curtains, snuck her a glass of wine that stained her mouth red and made her face flush, and told jokes. When Emily laughed he let his eyes drop to her mouth, to her breasts, to her lap.

Emily didn't relax at parties, it was something they had in common, but she looked relaxed now. Emma didn't like that.

"He wants to fuck you."

Emily recoiled, spotting Emma with her arms crossed, squinting at her from behind the cloud of headache.

"I can see him thinking about it, about how you look like a kid, how you're probably a virgin, what he'd have to say to get you to suck his cock. He thinks he's halfway there already. He's off getting you another glass of wine, gonna have you try his scotch, gonna ask if you have a boyfriend and then tell you you're pretty and he can't believe you don't. He's going to get you out of here and ask if you like him and say you make him so hard and just to touch it to make him feel better, he thinks you're so dumb that you'll believe him when he says it hurts him to get turned on and not get off. And--"

" _ Shut up! _ " It was hissed, a squeak in there as the force of the feeling warred with the need to not attract the attention of the entire party. Still people looked over. " _ Shut up, shut up, shut up _ . Why do you always ruin  _ everything _ ?"

Emily's flush was an angry one now, her eyes dark and flashing. She was clenching her hand over and over again, the one with the ghostmark. Emma's face felt hot and her mouth was dry, but her headache was gone. "I'm just a good Samaritan," Emma snapped back. "But sure, get groomed and manhandled by a predator if you want. It's not like anyone who wasn't a creep would give you any attention anyway."

Emily sat back with a jolt, like she'd been hit, and Emma felt faintly disappointed that even after all that Emily wasn't inclined to slap her.

#

It wouldn't have been their first touch anyways. They'd shaken hands and bumped shoulders and grabbed arms and that one time, when Adrienne had brought alcohol and a camera and they'd spun the bottle and she'd gotten blackmail pictures on everyone, they'd even kissed.

It had been an important kiss, brief and uncomfortable, Emily trapped between a rock and a hard place--she says no, they'll mock her for being a prude, she goes along with it, they'll mock her for being gay; Emma with something to prove, her daring and carelessness on the line. But it could have been anyone. It was the kiss that was important, not the person.

Emily had been relieved to get through it without revealing too much. It had made her a little more confident. It didn’t matter what she thought she was, she could always pretend to be something else.

Emma had been startled by the intimacy of the touch, when she knew Emily’s mind was elsewhere, in its own maelstrom of panic and distress. But the touch itself was gentle, pleasing. She didn’t like that. She didn’t care about being touched, but fuck anyone who tried to make her  _ feel _ .

#

John had a ghostmark on his palm too. They'd been chatting, two American kids in Italy, and then finally exchanged names and shook hands and . . . oh.

It felt right. Emily liked him, he was cute and charming and funny, and he was a boy. That seemed important, with the way Emily's throat clenched whenever the Italian teacher in her IB school walked into the classroom in her leather pumps and black dress and leather jacket.

She'd already started to start doubting whether or not he could really be her soulbond before she'd slept with him. She liked him, but she had more in common with Matt. John said things that repulsed her. He touched her and the butterflies felt more like bats, making her sick to her stomach at the knowledge that she would have to tell him he wasn't her match.

Then she started feeling sick for other reasons. Then John panicked and fled. Then Matt stepped up, and got her through it.

She got through it. She wished she could have gotten Matt through it. She saw him start to shatter, she wanted to help, needed to--but her mom moved her away.

#

There was a girl at a strip club. Bleached blonde hair, tall and confident and casual, and Emily didn't know what she was doing at the club at all, except some friends had dragged her. It was strange how around these people she was almost able to believe that the way she felt was okay, that the way her friends laughed when she screwed up was friendly, that the ugliness and weight of the things that had happened to her, could have happened to her, should have happened to her, they didn't matter.

But there was a girl at the strip club, and she caught sight of Emily, and the flash of rawness, of rage and jealousy and discontent made the shimmering façade shatter, sending cascading shards of pain through the whole room.

That was all Emily remembered of the night. She woke up the next morning broke and confused. Her friends laughed and laughed at her about the girl, the lapdance she'd apparently bought, the way she'd gotten all weird and intense. It didn’t feel friendly anymore. It felt like they were waiting to use her vulnerability against her.

One friend had taken photos. There was only one that had the girl in it, but it was enough to recognize who it was.

Somehow, Emily wasn't surprised at all that Emma had turned out to be a telepath.

#

"I find it amusing," Sebastien had said, cupping the mark on her cheek, "that someone with this, with the hope of something normal, something permanent, would ever hide it, would think that being here is the place to be."

Emma hid it, when she felt someone looking at her. Whatever baggage people carried about ghostmarks, it complicated how she was perceived. She needed to be able to control that. It would have been easier not to have it at all.

"You know how it is," Emma said. "The world doesn't make promises. If you let yourself believe it does, you have to find out eventually it doesn't keep them."

But she remembered Emily’s hand on her arm in the strip club, the concern on her face. It was years ago, and she still remembered it. She had thought she had learned how to be touched without having to feel anything, but when Sebastien took her it became clear that all she’d learned was how to be touched and have it never feel anything but bad.

She’d rather not be touched at all.

#

Amara had a ghostmark all up her front and on her shoulder. Sometimes she cried about it. She knew who her soulbond was, she  _ knew _ it, in a way Emma hadn't thought was real. But Emma had found the strands in Amara’s head, the quiet desperation that filled them, like hooked fibers. They clung. But Manuel did not cling back. Where his response should have been, he was like ice. Or like diamond.

Beneath that coating, she could see what should have been able to touch hers, he matching hooks, trapped in the ice.

Emma did not want to look inside herself. She didn't want to see the same barrier.

Maybe those idiots were right, and she had been given a gift. Maybe there was simply something about her that made her unable to accept it.

#

"There's an IRA leader, he has a ghostmark on his hand. We want you to meet him."

Matching ghostmarks were an in. Catholics were more serious about them than some other people. Emily always felt faintly that Doyle knew there was nothing real drawing them together. She smiled and was dismissive of the whole superstition around ghostmarks. She'd never been in love, she didn't know how it was supposed to feel or what she was supposed to do with it.

She loved his kid though. She loved that kid with  _ everything _ she'd been holding back.

It didn't make much of a difference in the end.

#

JJ was curious about the pale mark on Emily's hand. "Have you met him? What was it like? Can you really feel it--"

"No," Emily said, then felt guilty about the hurt look on JJ's face. She hadn't intended to be so blunt. "I've met a lot of people with matching marks. But it doesn't mean anything. It doesn't give you a better chance at finding someone than not having one."

"Just makes you more picky, right?" JJ tried to joke.

"Sure."

Emily hardly thought about it these days. It didn’t mean anything, she’d let herself believe. But JJ’s interest had reminded her of the weight she carried because of it. It had always been there, at her side, like a stop sign, keeping most people away, when those without a ghostmark kept reaching out, hoping to find into another ship in the dark that they could hitch up with an outrigger and become seaworthy, ready to face the storms ahead.

Having a ghostmark meant she couldn’t look for that. She patched and caulked herself. She kept an eye out for heavy weather. Someday she’d bump into someone, the right one, whatever that meant. But until then, she had to be the one to keep herself afloat.

#

Another party, Emily's mother, as always, expressed disappointment in her choices. "The BAU, really? You always deserved better than being a glorified cop."

Emily requisitioned a bottle of scotch from the open bar and stood in a curtained alcove and drank.

"You know, I didn't expect you to get  _ more _ socially awkward since you were a child."

Emma’s appearance--harshly fashionable, her hair falling to her shoulder blades, her eyes glittering, half a smirk on her face--was almost a comfort. Emily let herself scan her from sleek white leather heels to perfectly emphasized eyebrows, and smiled when Emma blinked, startled by her obvious once-over.

"Isn't it just like old times?" She offered Emma the bottle of scotch. "Though now that Adrienne's gone, there's no one to bully us into bad behavior."

A slight tension on Emma's face made it clear enough what Emily had suspected when she'd heard the case being discussed around the FBI.

"I'm sorry about your students," Emily said.

Emma took a long draft of the scotch. "There are always more students. Especially where I'm going."

Emily had heard about the island intended to become a mutant paradise. The questions of colonialism, Zionism, and the Liberian experiment arose, but it didn't feel like the time to debate the parallels.

"If you need someone to hunt down anyone who hurts your students . . . well, that's what I do now." And whatever her mother said, she liked what she did now. This was what she was meant for, hunting down the worst of the worst, making a difference. She had a place, a team. She’d never been very good at revealing things about herself, but this team, she felt, wasn’t waiting to use her vulnerabilities against her. She had a home there. She could finally be who she was.

Emily handed her her card. Emma took it. As their hands momentarily brushed, an odd sensation of certainty flooded through Emily’s skin.

Emma just looked at the card, then frowned at her, and left.

#

The sentinels came.

Emma stared at her diamond skin and pressed her face into unyielding hands.

No. There weren't always more students. Or even if there were, that didn't make the loss any less.

So much had been lost.  _ Hope _ had been lost, when Emma hadn’t realized she had any to lose. Her diamond skin was a lie, because inside she was shredded. Every child had lived inside her and their death had torn them away, leaving her in tatters, in broken threads and incomplete.

She had always been certain she could weather anything. She had never wanted to let people touch her, let them inside. But her shields had fallen. She had opened up. She had opened up over and over again, to the jackals that yipped and snuggled at first and only turned on her later. Every time she had been torn apart. 

It almost made her laugh. This moment, when she revealed a new mutation, a hardened form that made her invulnerable, it was the same moment where she could do nothing but admit that she was vulnerable, that no matter how hard she tried to make herself, how high she raised her shields, how fiercely she shut other people out, she could still be broken.

"Hey."

Emma didn't look up.

Movement, the person who had spoken kneeling before her. "Hey."

Emma lifted her head. Dark eyes, awash with pain, but certain, the kind of certain you could rely on. _Emily._

Diamond became flesh.

"You're okay."

Emma didn't have the words to express how much that just wasn't true. But she wanted to. For the first time, she wanted to admit her weakness. If it had been anyone else, perhaps she would have resealed her shields, put a false face on it. But it was Emily. She’d never been able to lie to her, not really. She shook her head.

" _ Em . . ." _

A hand cupped her cheek, and she felt it.

_ It’s you. _

###


End file.
